The Expanding Spygate Scandal, Explained
In the absence of a peaceful transfer of power, Obama went to historic lengths — and lows — to sabotage Trump.
BY ZACH HALLER | MAY 31, 2018
In recent weeks, it has come to light that Barack Obama’s FBI planted Stefan Halper, a former professor at Cambridge with extensive ties to the CIA and MI6, as a spy within Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign. Following an explosive February FISA memo compiled to analyze the Obama administration’s surveillance abuses in support of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, the “Spygate” bombshell exposes new depths of the Machiavellian scheme constructed by the Obama-Clinton regime to illegally surveil and ultimately usurp Trump during his 2016 campaign and onward into his Presidency.
Obama’s administration took the historic and egregious step of recruiting Halper, a national security academic, to spy on Trump associates during the campaign by striking up what seemed to be innocent professional contacts. Serving as a “confidential human source,” an official category of spy that is regulated by the FBI’s domestic investigations directive, Halper was placed in Trump’s campaign as part of Obama’s broader scheme to favor Clinton to succeed him, in direct conflict with the FBI’s rulebook that encourages alternatives to human spies in any investigation, particularly in one involving an election-year political campaign.
READ MORE: Nunes Confirms The FBI’s Trump-Russia Collusion Probe Was Baseless
Worse, Halper interacted with sources in the press during this time, providing anonymously-sourced information to lend credibility to the baseless Russia collusion investigation being used to sabotage Trump. Beyond Halper’s placement as a spy, these on and off-the record media liaisons raise damning red flags regarding the consequences and impropriety of an FBI agent making independent — and subversive — disclosures to the media. According to retired FBI investigator James Gagliano, such an operation is “highly irregular,” and “not something that [he] would have ever tolerated with any of the folks working for me.”
Those familiar with the Obama administration’s work to expand surveillance programs would not be surprised to learn Obama’s unhinged surveillance ultimately extended as far as using spies for brazenly political purposes. Obama’s administration spied on foreign heads of state, Congress, the press, and beyond; it seems logical he would go on to spy on the opposition party as he left office too, as criminal as it may be.
Fortunately, investigations have been ongoing and expanding since the initial revelation that Trump was wiretapped by Obama and his associates. These investigations encompass the extent to which Clinton cronies James Comey at the FBI and Loretta Lynch at the DOJ had knowledge of efforts made by federal agencies to unlawfully monitor communications of then-candidate Trump or his associates (1), leaks of classified information related to the unmasking of U.S. person identities incidentally collected by the intelligence community (2), and how senior officials within Obama’s administration — including Comey, Lynch, Rice, and Libya war architect Samantha Power — were involved in the “unmasking” of individuals on Trump’s campaign team, transition team, or both (3).
In April, the Inspector General released an initial report of findings detailing the role of former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe in the Clinton-Obama operation; less than a week later, a bombshell letter from Congressional representatives was issued recommending criminal investigations for possible violations of federal law by Clinton, Comey, Lynch, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, FBI Counsel Lisa Page, and DOJ and FBI personnel “connected to” work on the infamous Steele Dossier, including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente.
READ MORE: The Clinton Criminal Referrals Are Here
The extent to which this Obama-Clinton corruption contaminated and politicized Obama’s DOJ and FBI while Clinton staved off three Federal criminal investigations makes Watergate look like spilled milk. The New York Post’s Michael Barone laid out the obvious differences between Watergate and the Obama administration’s Spygate, emphasis added:
The Watergate burglars were arrested in flagrante delicto, and their wiretaps never functioned. Neither the FBI nor the CIA fully cooperated with the post-election cover-up.
That’s quite a contrast with the Obama law enforcement and intelligence appointees’ promotion of Christopher Steele’s Clinton campaign-financed dodgy dossier and feeding the mainstream media’s insatiable hunger for Russia collusion stories.
If the surveillance was based on a legitimate national security concern, that would be one thing; on the contrary, Spygate was strictly political: the underpinning of the entire scandal is that information used to initiate surveillance on Trump was compiled at the direction of Clinton and the Democrats and was knowingly false. Regardless, with support from Obama’s corrupt law enforcement agencies, this “research” — compiled by Steele, a foreign spy — still served as the ultimate crux of the issuance of the FISA warrants used against Trump.
Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) also confirmed the FBI’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion was not based on any official intelligence whatsoever. Fusion GPS, a shady third-party opposition research firm, was hired by Clinton in early 2016 to produce fake dirt about Trump involving Russia; that dirt — the now-infamous “Steele dossier” — was then used as the FBI’s pretext to conduct a covert investigation of the Trump campaign, including the use of Halper as a spy therein.
READ MORE: Yes, the FBI Was Investigating the Trump Campaign When It Spied
Americans unraveling the layers of Spygate should not be deterred by the breadth of these crimes as legacy media downplays them; they should be determined to ensure all are held accountable for this historically unprecedented scandal. Given the efforts Clinton went to in consolidating the corrupt American media prior to rigging the Democratic Primary in her favor, it is not surprising that the near-total media blackout of this unfolding scandal continues. Any media ignoring or downplaying the Clinton-Obama regime’s efforts to coordinate an illegal spying operation for political purposes — using government resources and taxpayer money, based on knowingly false evidence, and laundering money to fund it — should not be trusted. Particularly considering the Clintons’ long term reliance on the press as their co-conspirators, any media’s silence on this issue is likely a plain omission of guilt.
In the vacuum for truthful reporting created by the legacy media’s conglomeration in support for Clinton’s candidacy, any refusal by a journalist to hold those in power accountable exposes a journalist who has taken the side of the corrupt establishment. While the corrupt establishment media will continue to downplay and attempt to dismiss the gravity of charges against Clinton and Obama, Americans should not allow it.
READ MORE: Jordan Chariton and the Impending Collapse of Mainstream Media
As the public awaits the release of the IG report on how the FBI mishandled the 2016 Clinton email probe, we know it’s coming soon: Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has announced a hearing titled “Examining the Inspector General’s First Report on Justice Department Decisions Regarding the 2016 Presidential Election” to be held in early June. According to early reports, the first release of the IG investigation will hold Comey and McCabe accountable for their egregious mishandling of various elements of the case, and the extent this corruption tarnished the image and credibility of the FBI.
Following eight years of white collar impunity under Obama, Trump’s efforts to police Clinton and Obama’s criminality have already changed America in that its corrupt oligarchs are no longer too big to jail. While Obama, Clinton, and their allies in D.C. and the media do all they can to resist arrest and delay the inevitable, it is clear that Obama and Clinton’s shadowy Deep State cabal was no match against the will of the American people. With Trump’s DOJ closing in, Americans of all stripes should rally to ensure investgations are transparent and impartial; a righteous interrogation that goes to the very top of the Clinton-Obama cabal is both urgent and necessary to restore Americans’ faith in a justice system that has long betrayed them.
Anyone so naive to think that Obama represented the American people during his term should by now realize that his goal was not to reverse the decline of the American working class, but to hasten it. The magnitude of the corrupt operation designed and implemented to ensure the Clinton Restoration was of a historically unprecedented scale, and built with the intention to impose a new totalitarianism on the American people using the corrupt elements of the American power establishment against them. With the heavy lifting of blocking the Clinton Restoration behind them and grand juries seated to review criminal evidence from the IG, Americans can rest assured the IG probe and incoming criminal prosecutions will ensure what happened to Trump will not happen to his ultimate successor. As investigations carry on, the Obama-Clinton swamp will drain, and the Clinton cancer that has crippled American government for decades will soon be fully eradicated.
It can’t happen soon enough. ∎
READ MORE: Worse Than Watergate: FISA Memo Blows Open The Biggest Scandal of Our Time
This article was originally published on Medium on May 31, 2018. Recently, Medium permanently suspended my blog for violating its "Trust and Safety" standards. I am an independent writer, activist, and everyday American based in Seattle, Washington. If you enjoyed this, please upvote it, share it with your networks, and/or donate to my paypal.